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| In the 80s mom's line of cheesecakes were voted Best in Tucson. |
In the summer of 79 I got my mom
royally baked. At the time I was a
sophomore at UMASS, Amherst, and as a newly minted cannabis fan, I was taking
full advantage of the fine herb available in the Pioneer Valley. Sensimilla was little known and rarely
available, and almost everyone figured prohibition was here to stay. The times they are a changing, but not fast
enough to save some of our closest friends and family.
My mom was a painter,
photographer, a crewel embroidery artist, green thumb gardener, a great cook,
and a functioning alcoholic. She had a
nice little condo down on the Gulf coast of Florida where I stayed with her between
semesters.
Her core issue was depression,
which she tried to overwhelm with alcohol and prescription medicines, the only
legal choices she had. Her generation
was raised on coffee, tobacco and spirits.
Pot was very illegal and assumed to be worse than it appeared. Pills were the modern solution people took
for everything—including addiction to pills.
My mom believed in the system, and followed the advice of her doctors.
I was an enthusiastic novice
stoner with no clue about the many ways cannabis might have been used to help
my mom kick her destructive habits; recreationally, medicinally, and as an
exotic, nurturing garden flower she would have eagerly added to her second
floor balcony jungle of hanging and potted plants. Whenever I suggested she try weed as a buzz substitute
for hard spirits, her response was always the same;
Marijuana
is illegal. We don’t break laws; we vote
to change laws we don’t agree with. When
it’s legal maybe then we’ll talk about it…nuff said.
We got along great, and she fed
me well, but her drinking was a painful source of friction. The drama and deceptions were taxing, and after
yet another incident, I drove down to The Oyster Shucker (Jimmy’s long-gone
hangout), scored some decent weed and grabbed a little metal bong at the local
headshop.
The following day, my mom
reluctantly agreed to give cannabis a try.
To make sure she felt enough to know whether it was for her, I had her
blaze to cinders an entire party bowl (with my help to show her how…). She spent the morning on her dock, drinking
ice tea, fishing, and smiling.
While she admittedly enjoyed
the experience, using marijuana as a regular therapy (or ever again) was out of
the question. She was the ex-wife of
conservative Boston surgeon, a law-abiding citizen from a respectable Yankee family
with deep eastern roots; end of story.
I have since learned that cannabis—especially
stealthy, non-smoked medicinal preparations—could have safely tempered her use
of alcohol—a drug she typically reached for when she was feeling good rather than
bad (then couldn’t stop). Cannabis would
have provided a safe new means for her to create, release, party and
relax. As a cook it would have been easy
for her to treat herself with cannabis in the privacy of her own life; bake at
420, skip the cocktails at seven.
These days my mom might have found
relief in a legal state, which is a sign of the great progress we’re making in
the battle to restore the right to treat ourselves with cannabis. As evidence mounts that patients are having
success using it to safely overcome toxic addictions, a
new approach to substance abuse therapy is in order.
Clean,
not sober
Cannabis patients ought to be free to grow their own, and be
supplied well enough to be able to explore the full range of therapeutic options;
smoked, vaporized, edibles, wax, shatter, tincture, oil-filled gel caps, salves, and fresh
juice, which by the way, is highly medicinal but not psychoactive.
Such is not nearly the case, and yet even in the face of relentless government aggression, cannabis is rising fast as a safe and therapeutic substitute
for pills and alcohol.
Cannabis is not physically addictive and is famously
non-toxic, meaning Western sobriety edicts can be unnecessary and
counterproductive for patients with a fondness for weed. Getting clean and staying sober is a formula
that doesn’t work for them; so why do they have to stay sober like NONE of their friends and family?
As cannabis is adopted as a therapeutic choice, addiction sufferers will learn how to make medicinal use of cannabis in the privacy of their own lives. They won't be sober, maybe never again, but they'll be getting back into their creative lives with a drug choice that won't ever kill them.
With the truth online and in the streets, it’s only a matter
of time before cannabis prohibition is little more than a sobering history
lesson for all time to come. The surgeon general recently drove a stake in the heart of Schedule One by declaring cannabis can be used as medicine. Has cannabis been taken off Schedule One; of course not. The US Government will drag this on for as long as they can; patients and healing be damned.
It might take a decade more, but in time cannabis
healing strategies will be known to most and practiced by many, and psychedelics immersion
spas will be all the rage.
Imagine a cannabis retreat combining the nurturing, free-will
ambiance of a luxury health spa with the cannabis supply and life-skills
workshops of a top dispensary. Since
successful, driven types who respond well to cannabis are often very creative
and like to learn, cannabis spas would feature hands-on amenities like a cannabis
kitchen with lessons on the bench, a tincture lab, a greenhouse,
music/recording studio, painting/sculpture studio, video editing suite, screening
room, and time alone to ponder, imagine, create, and chill... a MacDowell Colony
environment featuring the finest green, and no alcohol.
There’s certainly a need for such places, as evidenced all
too often by high-profile substance-related deaths of skilled artists like
Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse, and by the mercilessly exploited struggles of talented
stars like Charlie and Lindsay. Just
like with my mom, when industrial age therapies and meds fail these people,
they are the ones who always seem to take the blame.
Since cannabis spas would presumably need to be located on private
islands and on secluded estates, well, if you have to ask the price… Still, it’d
be money well spent if high-powered patients
left with the skills to substitute various preparations of cannabis for the
stuff that’s hurting their careers and in some cases doing them in. And if some of those recoveries happen to occur
in the media spotlight, maybe then the truth will finally reach the masses:
it’s not pot, it’s medicine.
Mainstreamers do most of the living and dying in this world;
many are suffering from ills cannabis cures.
So just you watch. Any day now North Americans are going to wake up and
see what cannabis really is and what it can do for them. Then they’ll rise up and end the cannabis wars
for their own good reasons. Any day
now...
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| The Toss photo by Elizabeth Wells (Hedberg) 1979 |
Carl Hedberg is a writer, speaker and cannabis use explorer with
a note to film makers; help end this entrenched war of words and images by
quietly delivering medicinal cannabis truth to the big screen. Send me some material, I’ll show you what I
mean. Twitter questions and comments
@cannabisrising or visit Carl on Facebook (thefinestgreen).
